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"Widevine Dump":Leaked Code Downloads HD Video from Disney+, Amazon, and Netflix

(torrentfreak.com)
449 points bertman | 2 comments | 27 Dec 21 12:55 UTC | HN request time: 0.617s | source
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alufers ◴[27 Dec 21 16:43 UTC] No.29703989[source]▶
Can we just stop the shitshow with DRM? I have NEVER encountered a TV show/movie that I could't rip using a torrent either on public p2p sites or a private tracker.

But I have seen a lot of my non-technical friends and family having a degraded experience, who pay for their streaming services every month. It was either because they were using a browser or device which was deemed unworthy of full quality streaming by the mighty DRM authors. And now the poor users of the TB-X505X will also have a degraded experience.

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tomxor ◴[27 Dec 21 16:49 UTC] No.29704050[source]▶
Yeah, I don't know in what world DRM is supposed to stop people ripping stuff, it only seems to hurt paying users, ultimately if it comes out of a screen you can always capture the output, no amount of DRM will ever prevent this so why bother <insert conspiracy vs Hanlon's razor theories here> .

The irony is that as a Linux user (only SD for us), and a user with poor internet and thus shitty streaming speed, DRM pushes me towards torrenting everything I "buy" from these platforms anyway, just for the privileged of being able to watch what i'm paying for without being a blurry over-compressed mess, without having my device rooted by a third party, and not needing to be blessed with a consistent high speed internet connection.

I've said it before, torrenting today is as good as the experience of buying music on a physical medium in the 90s... you bought it, took it home, and played it in fully quality uninterrupted, END OF STORY. streaming services still haven't matched this experience.

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5e92cb50239222b ◴[27 Dec 21 18:43 UTC] No.29705369[source]▶
> torrenting today is as good as the experience of buying music on a physical medium in the 90s

You meant to say "it's much better than buying experience has ever been". You throw an RSS feed into your torrent client once and get desktop or email notifications when a new episode is downloaded and ready to play. If there's enough disk space, you can add whole categories in there and have hundreds of shows available locally at any time.

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wernercd ◴[27 Dec 21 19:22 UTC] No.29705830[source]▶
Or, you get a small server and download a package... with a little finangaling, you have a service that will catalog shows and movies you want to watch, download them, sort them and push them to your own private "netflix" server ala Plex.

https://github.com/sebgl/htpc-download-box

put it behind a VPN (included) and bam... all your stuff, globally gotten and none of the BS with "Wildvine" and it's ilk.

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LordDragonfang ◴[27 Dec 21 23:11 UTC] No.29708104[source]▶
>with a little finangaling

This is the part that you're wildly underselling, and missing the whole point by doing so. Netflix is just a better UX for anyone that doesn't make a hobby out of tinkering with tech

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wernercd ◴[29 Dec 21 15:19 UTC] No.29725541[source]▶
Plex is pretty damn good. If netflix is "better", it's marginally so.

There is learning with the above... docker to start and NZB/Torrenting... server management...

If you know those things already? or are close? great learning experience (my case).

is it worth ~$14/month for Netflix? Prime? Disney+? HBO Max? etc? maybe... but at a certain point the 'nickel and dime' gets to a point to where learning how to do the above becomes more worth it.

You don't need an expensive computer/server to do all this... just time and a desire to learn. once done? you control your own library and no need to worry about losing your content if you stop the monthly payments.

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1. wingworks ◴[29 Dec 21 19:30 UTC] No.29728960[source]▶
Streaming used to be pretty good, when Netflix was basically the only one (with most content), but it's so fragmented now, that you need so many subscriptions that it's not cheap, and pretty annoying flipping between apps to find the show/movie you want to watch, then to find it expired last week, and you have to find out who still streams it.
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2. wernercd ◴[01 Jan 22 19:39 UTC] No.29761858[source]▶
I mean, don't get me wrong... streaming is still pretty good. Fragmentation of content aside, there's more good content than there's ever been. So I'm not a 100% doom and gloomer...

but...

Getting that content has the "provider" problem. As you say, whack'a'mole to get the movie you want.

People always bitched that "Cable is horrible! Why do I have to pay for 400 channels to get the 3 I watch!". And here we are... able to pay for "Ala'Carte" and it's exactly what everyone wanted - and expected: Paying more for each bucket. Instead of $100 (or whatever a full cable plan is)... you're paying $75 for internet, $15 for netflix, $10 for prime (or whatever it amoritizes yearly), disney+, hbo max, Discovery+, etc, etc, etc.

Finding the EXACT movie you want is a hassle... and that hassle is what drives me to Plex. Radarr/Sonarr/NZB/etc all roll together to make a massively good platform that, learning aside, hands all the power back. I do have to pay for some stuff (NZB, Plex, internet, time learning, etc) but it's my time and worth it.